KUMASI & SENCHI VILLAGE

mama,


i've waiting long to write this all down and i want to preface what i say by explaining that i have no regrets, have no great feelings of despair, little to no discontent even. daily, i enjoy myself thoroughly and have had only brief passing moments when i feel homesick. the experience i'm having, though questionable in its effect on my personality has had a much larger influence on my ability to find pleasure in any surroundings. it's a talent i can only wish i had at the outset of college, but i contently lie in the bed i've made for myself. though even here i fantasize about the many advantages i would have had now and in the future had i attended rutgers in newark from freshmen year. regardless, let me report what i intend to convey, especially to those who might imagine me dancing in colorful kentes, taking the dirt in my hands as i enthrall in the motherland and what she has to offer mentally, socially, experiencially. i rather hope to provide a bleaker picture in order to ground myself, and explain some aspects of being in this place. this is why i preface by explaining the ecstacy i feel regularly -- as not to worry my friends and family who might see my descriptions as unfortunate and disdainful.


almost every morning during the two week homestay in kumasi, i was awakened by the stench of burning plastic. pure water comes primarily in plastic satchets for 5 cents, and the finished bag is generally discarded anywhere. waste removal is a small industry here as most trash is discarded in the bush or in the gutters. however, most homeowners simply save their trash until they take the lot and burn it outside their compounds. in fact, i've seen some families use the plastic as kindling in a fire used to boil water.


taking public transportation involves using tro-tros or lorries, as they used to be called, which seem to be all imported from the netherlands or other scandinavian countries. being inside a tro-tro in the hot hours of the day (12-6) increases the body's temperature by at least 5 degrees, and the only consolation is if you have a window seat. though it feels temporarily satisfying to have the wind blow in from the window, the fumes of the traffic, the dirty petrol and the age-old engines makes breathing very difficult.


two friends in my group took a taxi to their homes and found the driver speeding so dangerously down a main road that he hit a woman walking across the street. while getting his bearings and coming to a halt some 100 yards away, my friends decided to get out of the car to check the woman's condition. they saw many people gathering, running from all sides to help her and my friends did not know what to do. the man driving their taxi went close enough to see that the woman was very badly if not fatally injured and ran back to his car to flee the scene. before panicking, my friends found another driver went immediately home. the next morning our advisor told us that if the driver had stayed with the crowd, his car would be set on fire, and in certain bad neighborhoods, he could easily have been stoned to death. he did add that most taxi drivers in that situation would flee in order to report the matter directly to the police.


in kumasi i found my closest friends on the program and the connection i have with them is necessary for me. my ability to bounce my thoughts off of theirs and to share my experiences good and bad makes life pleasant, simple and i appreciate them greatly. especially for their tolerance of my sometimes short temper with the other students in the program.


though i was very intimidated by life in the village, both leading up to our departure and during our first few hours in senchi. however, by the end of the first day, i felt blissful in the laid back lifestyle of the rural community. senchi was in the center between the other two villages that our group were housed in. each village 6 students, 3 villages, 18 students total. though we asked to be placed together, the three males in the group were separated, one in each village. my group was mostly to my liking and my attempts to find friends based in similarities in the larger group, being in the smaller group forced me to have friends based on having put aside all differences.

living in the village was more what one might imagine when they picture americans abroad in africa. there are children everywhere and they run towards you, call you from dozens of yards away, fight for your attention and your acknowledgement. some choose to ask you for money immediately, others wait until you've greeted them several times and other just want to slap your hand and say your name. in addition, adults don't allow you to pass without greeting and a greeting involves not nearly just a wave and the contact of eyes. rather, greetings go something like this:

obroni, ma a kye o! (white man, good morning)
yaa ena, wo ho te sen? (yes ma'am, how is your health?)
oyname adum, me ho ye, ne wo nsue? (god's grace, i'm strong, and you?)
ho ye pa, onyame ase (feeling very strong, we thank god)
yoo, ye be hyia o! (good, we shall meet again)

in the ten minute walk from my compound to the site where the students met for meals and activities, i did this exchange multiple times.


our project in the village was to find a local art or industry and to master and study it. i chose to study the distillation of palm wine into the local gin, apatese -- a narcotic of a drink with a pungent stench, made only to placate a man who drank too much the night previous and wishes himself drunker to start the day before him. in fact, in the village the women do most of the work and most of the men are drunks. if they're not morning regulars at one of the four local distributors of apatese -- two beer bars, two bars who only push the local drink -- they are town elders who complete every community ritual with the ceremonial taking of shnapps after pouring libations for the ancestor's blessing. i worked with the man who taps the palm tree for juice for three days and learned how the distillation worked and followed up my experience interviewing three alcoholics and three distributors. i look forward to the completion of my paper, and i feel that my information is interesting and provacative.


my greatest issue with village life, however was less with the behavior of the locals, child and adult, but rather the behavior of the girls in my group. no less than three of them went everywhere with their cameras searching for group and candid photos of the children who idolized them and adored them as they walked down the road. the blind and unbridled love for whites among the children is very discomforting to me but easily understandable as they see our presence as holding vast opportunities for them both in the moment and in the future. they stare and call out with such regularity and repetitiveness that at certain moments i couldn't be bothered to give a glance. in fact, sometimes i was so frustrated that i responded to their calls with a loud "ko fie!" meaning "go home." but i harbored no resentment for them or for their parents who encouraged them to ask us for money and whom i saw regularly showing blatant disregard for their children's whereabouts or well being. while these facts may have startled and surprised me, i hold not even distaste or disrespect for their style of parenthood and child rearing.


one girl in my group studied education and came to meals each day exasperated and flabbergasted at the behavior of parents who put no investment in their children's education and the inability of the schools to address or interest the students, let alone get them to learn. while i understood her frustration, i found her ideas narcisistic and obtuse if not obviously disrespectful. while the children are not receiving an education at the standards of which we are accustomed, children get educated whether or not it's in school. in skills alone, farming skills, carrying skills, cooking skills, etc, the children learn more in their first five years than american children learn in their first fifteen. i don't even include the education they get from the culture and the community about their own history, the history of the asante people and the history of their spiritual leaders, their beliefs, their proverbs, and their customs. these are forms of education that are relevant to the lives they will grow to lead -- much more so than subject verb agreement in the english language.


everyday i heard her complain about her wish to be helping people and to be doing community service, without attending to the thought that she came here to study culture, not to impose upon it. her desire to help and save, while i applaud its optimism, is foolish and imagines herself living in a reality that does not exist. while i would have also loved the feeling i got from building a church or digging a site for a landfill, i would be working to cater to my own desire to feel good about myself, rather than observing how others find joy and find ways to feel good about themselves in the face of poverty and underdevelopment. what i believe that the girl ignored is that these people often seem much happier, congenial and ready to laugh and engage with friends and strangers than any westerner i've met. could she not see that their situation was not to be pitied, but rather respected for its resilience and more so respected indifferently in seeing that the people are still people, and not just "africans?" her only attempts to make friends in the community were with the cutest, smallest, blackest 2 year old child she could find to put on her lap and take pictures of. i found it deplorable.


in every new setting i am faced more and more with the reality of my own meaninglessness, and also the stark contrasts between my own reasons for coming here and the reasons of my companions. though it makes it harder to socialize in the larger group, it provides much material for my thoughts: the place i have learned to keep my opinions as a struggle to keep my mouth shut around certain collegues. this is partly why i make such effort to commed my close friends for their sympathy and empathy with my need to let out aggressions while not in the presence of certain others.


i emphasize again in closing how much i do enjoy myself, as the picture painted is bleak i admit. i also apologize for my grammar and spelling in my previous entry and for any further errors in this entry. needing to pay for time spent surfing web, i chose not to proofread.


much love, jules